The Ware for April is shown below.
Thanks to everyone who answered my calls for wares! I’ve only got so many weird gadgets in my place to tear apart, but now I’ve got material for the next couple months. This month’s ware is courtesy of Jack Whittaker!
The huge Genesis chip hits https://www.anandtech.com/show/1193/6, so this is a board from an LCD monitor. Not sure offhand which one, as that’s a BNC connector on the bottom left of the A picture, which makes this seem like a more niche product, probably not the Dell 2001FP that the article is about.
The BNC goes to RXM-418-LC-P, which is a 418MHz RF receiver.
Is this some kind of security monitor, receiving a signal from a remote transmitter?
I wanted the paired DC37 and DB9 to be an RS-499 interface, but particularly the big fat trace (with fuse!) and the plane on some of the DB9 pins makes that seem unlikely.
I did find this note on Wikipedia about where DC37 might make an appearance, though: D-SUB 37 connectors are commonly used in Hospital facilities as an interface between hospital beds and nurse call systems, allowing for the connection and signaling of Nurse Call, Bed Exit, and Cord out including TV entertainment and lighting controls.
A strange collection of parts. My blind guess is a portable device (tablet?) for utility workers to read or diagnose power/water/gas meters. Something like this but as an all-in-one with integrated screen:
https://sensus.com/solutions/ert-meter-reading/
More to the point, what the heck happened to it?
At least one of the batteries were evicted with a screwdriver; various electrolytics are missing; OSC2 had an unfortunate shaving accident and rumor has it that one of the 470uF caps was last seen in low-earth-orbit!
I was going to ask that too, I guess the supercaps on the top right were cannibalised but then I can see a lot of other components that aren’t there…
The 8 large footprints with capacitor designators are probably supercapacitors, but I don’t know what it would need this many for unless the incoming power supply is very unstable. Given the onboard 12V/5V/3.3V power supplies and the supercaps I would guess this was used somewhere where ~24V DC power was already available, maybe on a vehicle? None of the IC part numbers are for the industrial/automotive variants and the connectors are not what I would expect for those environments. There is one Micrel IC up in the power supply section that I cant find any info on except on NSN list / aircraft part supply websites.
What a complex board!
It has FPGA, ColfFire processor, freescale MC9S12 microcontroller, LCD monitor (Genesis chip controlled), a RF remote receiver (418MHz), db9 and db37 connectors, and even more non marked chips. Connected to db37 there are two diferential amplifiers (AD817), so there are at least two analog inputs.
Connected to 3, 6 pin connectors, there are a LVTH16244 digital buffer, so there are several digital inputs.
I guess that this could be a kind of data logger with lcd display and external adquisition modules.
sheesh, pin damage on spartan & coldfire chips. this thing will never work again.
Going to throw my hat in the ring for this one – I am thinking medical as well, but more along the lines of a portable Ultrasound/Doppler scanner with built in screen.
My 2p would be a control panel for a big tractor or combine harvester.
I think this is the mainboard for a projector of some kind
Possibly an integrated receiver for devices the infirm use when they fall? The 418 MHz RF module makes me think possibly something by Instant Care? https://fccid.io/frequency-explorer.php?lower=418&upper=433.92 may be of use to people.